My schedule has been hectic and stressful, and it has really sapped my creative urge, my muse is unconscious.

Lots of things going on at work, we are shifting production, and are in the process of getting a really really big client, and I've gotten a promotion to supervisor and I've got two more weeks before I am going to be going solo on it. There have also been some health issues, aka t-boning a car while riding my bike. Left hand has three knuckles that still probably fractured, so that takes a lot of enthusiasm out of potential writing.

So today writing feels like something other people do, and something that I used to do.

Once this all settles down, it should be fine and I'll get creative again.

Not much has changed, I am still running under a pretty heavy load, and I have had a few health issues the last few weeks. It's nothing serious or life threatening, just draining. I was feeling really down, to tell the truth.

But one of those list of bullet points that float around the internet was posted to my Facebook page, a list of writing tips from one of the writers I personally respect, one Mr. Stephen King. Most of it was stuff I already knew, but there was something that stuck out, a writing tip I'd not encountered before, or if I had, that seed fell on the sidewalk and not the soil.

You have three months. “The first draft of a book—even a long one—should take no more than three months, the length of a season.”

Longer than that and it gets stale, and you end up a tourist trapped in it.

So I started writing

Then another writer I follow on Facebook (Jon Acuff) posted a little update about just setting a mundane time, for an hour, and writing. It's a little thing, coinciding with an article I read about things you didn't know Google could do, like, wait for it, set a timer.

These things have all rolled into one another. I set the Google timer, and I start writing. I don't write for an hour at a time, instead it's 15 to 20 minutes at a time. I will sometimes run 2-3 of these blocks together, other times I break it up. I still have other things I have to do, but it's given me more focus on my writing, and made me realize how to better spend time at the computer. Less time on Facebook, less time reading random articles and looking at photo websites.

I am writing now, some here, but the vast majority is on my novel.

I have stayed up late working on the story, and I have woken up in the middle of night, and I've gotten up early to work on it. I am aiming to have the first draft complete, cult of done, by either Halloween or my birthday (about a week later).

You have three months. “The first draft of a book—even a long one—should take no more than three months, the length of a season.”

Longer than that and it gets stale, and you end up a tourist trapped in it.

So I started writing

Then another writer I follow on Facebook (Jon Acuff) posted a little update about just setting a mundane time, for an hour, and writing. It's a little thing, coinciding with an article I read about things you didn't know Google could do, like, wait for it, set a timer.

These things have all rolled into one another. I set the Google timer, and I start writing. I don't write for an hour at a time, instead it's 15 to 20 minutes at a time. I will sometimes run 2-3 of these blocks together, other times I break it up. I still have other things I have to do, but it's given me more focus on my writing, and made me realize how to better spend time at the computer. Less time on Facebook, less time reading random articles and looking at photo websites.

Makes me think of the Pomodoro technique where you basically work in 25 minute chunks, taking 5 minute breaks in between. I use it now and then to get myself back on track when I'm overwhelmed by all the crap at work. Haven't had much luck using it for writing, but that's because my muse is a whiny little &^%$@...

I really like the bit about keeping a draft down to 3 months. I can see the wisdom in it.

I've completed the first section of my novel, which I aimed to complete by the end of August, by my reckoning that's 28 hours away. I finished 4 'chapters' for the first arc in 113 pages over 67,200 words.

I feel very much accomplished, and feel like taking the rest of the Labor day weekend off, and starting fresh on the middle section next week.

Woke up at 4:30 this morning and had to get up, start the next word document for section 2 of the book, pasting my guideline notes into it (which I delete as I go through them in the course of the story) started the page count at 3, and after a short writing session, I added another two pages to it. It's rather slow going at this point because I break my writing down into three general categories, dialog, action, and movement in the backfield. The first two are easy, people talking, and people doing things. The last one is the hard part because that is where things transition, info dumps try to happen, and the story changes course. Right now, the change between the first section and the second is the largest 'course correction' for the MC, and it takes the most to make it happen.

Ah, how I have come to love that sense of accomplishment and victory that I get when I pull the wool over the eyes of a clever player character. What DM Triumphs have you had?

Some of mine:1. Finally killing an incredibly powerful, lucky, annoying player's character.2. Finally achieving a TPK (Total Party Kill)3. Finally achieving a TPK using only traps4. Finally working out how to make it so that d**n wizard doesn't steal the spotlight all the d**n time.